Oh-- ohh... one more!!
Consider for a moment just how many people in the world have all of their basic needs met and are therefore sort of receptive to 'taking it higher' as it were, into the realm of higher cognitive functions:
Maslow's Heirarchy of NeedsEven if we were to assume that some 30% of the world's population has those needs met, then that means that-- even in the absense of any other factors of mitigation-- we've gone from 6300 persons to 1890 who might have the "ability" to problem-solve at an Einsteinian level.
If we were to further assume (as is not unreasonable, I think) that a person has to actually
encounter his or her passion at the right time to light that fire, and that if the right person, right time, and right presentation doesn't all take place, the opportunity for genesis is lost...
well, then I think that begins to explain why we have not seen a second Shakespeare or Einstein, and why we perhap won't for another 500-5,000 years.
I strongly suspect that the odds are greatly against the right set of circumstances coming together with the precisely right person. Part of that is the relative scarcity of prodigious talent, certainly, but part of it is also that most of the people with latent prodigious talent never have it 'triggered' by the right combination of things when they are uniquely receptive to them.
